


The Hearth

by Fourier



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Perc'ahlia mentioned, Whitestone, de Rolo Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/Fourier
Summary: Percy had forgotten how cold the Castle got in the winter. The walls were thick and insular, yes, and he had at least remembered to buy warm underclothes, light a fire in he and Vex’s room—but the cold of Whitestone is not a cold that can be kept out. It seeps in every crack in the walls, in the floor, in your skin, and settles there like snowfall.





	

Percy had forgotten how cold the Castle got in the winter. The walls were thick and insular, yes, and he had at least remembered to buy warm underclothes, light a fire in he and Vex’s room—but the cold of Whitestone is not a cold that can be kept out. It seeps in every crack in the walls, in the floor, in your skin, and settles there like snowfall.

You can never really _remember_ cold like that, he thinks. Not until you’re in it again, shivering down to your bones, so cold it feels like you’ll never be warm.

Vex sleeps through it the first night, somehow. He looks at her, curled in on herself with furs up to her chin, and watches the steady rise-and-fall of her chest under the mound of blankets. He thinks, unexpectedly, of the stories she’s reluctantly told him of her and her brother in the days after Syngorn, before Stillben. Of nights spent on forest floors, huddled around a too-small fire, before even a bear to keep her company. 

He wonders if she will ever stop astounding him, by way of her existence.

He, for his part, wakes shivering and nearly numb. After a moment he slips out of bed, out of the warmth of the covers and into the frigid air. He thinks about putting on his coat; it is warm enough, surely, but—.

(But it feels strange, wearing his version of armor at home, at night, when he should be allowed to shed it.)

So he walks without it. Some semblance of muscle memory draws him, and he follows it, blindly and nearly-trusting. 

He realizes, after a few turns down the hallway, that he is walking towards the sitting-room. I the heart of the castle, behind layers of thick stone that give the city its name; small enough to hold the heat of the fire that warms it, and near enough the kitchens to leach their heat as well. 

It was always the warmest room, almost unbearably so in the summers, and he remembers—with the sort of shuddering clarity that memories of his childhood always seem to come with—the children gathering there late winter nights to keep out the cold. Him, lying in front of the fireplace with a book his parents could not convince him to put away. Julius, writing a letter, a missive, a draft of an order their father would sign. Whitney and Oliver, bickering like they always did, kicking at each other’s feet. Vesper, finishing her embroidery, due two nights before. Ludwig, catching grapes in his mouth as he threw them in the air. And—

When he opens the door now Cassandra jumps; she turns away from the fire, towards him, as he shuts the door behind him. 

She turns away again as he walks towards her. The room is still cold, but bearable now—especially as he sits in an awkward cross-legged position next to Cass, and he looks around the room as she stares into the flames.

The writing-desk is gone; the oil-lamp, gone; the couch, the high-backed chair, the rug, all gone. The room is gutted like the rest of the castle, scooped hollow. The walls are untouched, and the hard wood of the floor still shines, and the fire burns hot, but otherwise it is just him, and Cassandra, and the slightly-dampened cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "chilled"; come find me @ brotherkashaw on tumblr.


End file.
